Britain has been about as successful at producing top class tennis players over the past 50 years as Switzerland has in coming up with heavyweight boxing champions; which is odd, because lawn tennis is a singularly English concept. One of the most famous poems in the English language, A Subaltern's Love Song, by the late poet laureate John Betjeman, centres on a tennis match in London's leafy suburbs.
And therein, maybe, lies the problem. Deep down, we still think of tennis as a gentle pastime and a pleasant precursor to afternoon tea, rather than the gladiatorial showdown between focused and dedicated professionals, it clearly has become. This is not to say that Tim Henman, who kept a little flame burning for British tennis for more than a decade, was not a very talented and hard-working player. But he still came from the polite environs of England's South East, from within sight of Oxford's dreaming spires, and never seemed entirely happy mixing it with opponents who had fought their way out of war-torn Eastern Europe, or had survived ultra-intense American or Australian training regimens.
Well now, in Andy Murray, Britain has a street-fighting professional who comes from that mould, and we are not entirely sure how to react. Shamefully, there were people here in Britain, in advance of the US Open final, who said they would not be supporting Murray because they "did not like his attitude". By this, they meant they were unhappy with his stubble, his grey polo shirts, his unsmiling demeanour, and his habit of punching the air and letting out a scream after winning an important point.
The fact that Murray is Scottish may have had something to do with it as well. He jokingly said in an interview during the 2006 football World Cup that he would support Paraguay against England, which stuck in the craw of some English fans, who did not realise the remark was meant light-heartedly. In their defence, it is not always easy to tell when Murray is joking because his expression rarely changes from that of a man from the Highlands, whose Scottish £20 note has just been refused in an English pub.
But who cares? Murray's play against Warwinka and Nadal at Flushing Meadows, and indeed his courageous rearguard action against a back-to-his-best Roger Federer, deserves our unstinting admiration. You cannot imagine Henman or Rusedski, fine gentlemen players that they were, showing the resolve of the man from Dunblane. There is, maybe, a misunderstanding in Britain of the way the game of tennis works. More than any other, with the possible exception of golf, it is a sport that is played in the head. What might sometimes look like boorish behaviour on the court is Murray forcing himself to maintain his focus, to keep his inner game going in the face of all external factors.
It can be an intense struggle. Because of the singular scoring system in tennis, whole championships can turn on a single point. Arguably, Murray's fate was sealed in the second set against Federer when he got an outrageously bad call at 40-15, in sight of a second break of serve. He failed to challenge and the title began visibly to slip away from him. For the spectator, the psychological battle is often as fascinating to watch as the physical game.
Murray and his team have had to work out tactics to enable the Scotsman to challenge Djokovic, Nadal, and Federer, who were looking pretty well inviolable at the top. Their success in doing this has enabled Murray to break into that charmed circle, an achievement to rank alongside a team like Aston Villa, say, breaking into the Premier League's "big four". It is all very professional and unEnglish of Murray, but to misquote from another famous English poem, Rupert Brooke's The Old Vicarage, Grantchester, the US Open finalist has the look of a man who could not give a tinker's cuss whether there is honey still for tea. @Email:martin.kelner@yahoo.co.uk
